Eureka! … Since 1981

Eureka! Classics | Showing an innate genius for telling a story through the rapidly developing medium of moving pictures, the one-time bit-part actor and aspiring writer, D W Griffith, stunned the world with this high quality big-screen production containing spectacular panoramic battle scenes.

Following a period as production supervisor and director at Biograph Studios, he moved to Majestic-Reliance in 1913 where he began to devise the structure for his masterpiece.

Based on a best-selling novel and negrophobic play called The Clansman, Griffith produced a three-hour epic that, in 1915, set a new standard for film production and absorbing melodrama. It follows the lives of two white families divided by, and enduring, the American Civil War, and includes elaborate cameos of historical events such as the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Costing the then unprecedented sum of $100,000 to make, it opened in Los Angeles on 8 February 1915 and quickly became the most successful silent film ever made. It grossed over $10 million on its first release.

Many denounced its overt racism and wars with the censors were used for publicity with brilliant effect. Social reformers constantly denounced the film’s racism and historians protested about its claims to historical accuracy. Wherever it was shown, protests, and sometimes riots, ensued and authorities frequently enforced cuts of the more offensive parts of the film.

To the end of his life, Griffith, claimed not to understand these persistent criticisms but, remember, the film begins with the following message: “A PLEA FOR THE ART OF THE MOTION PICTURE – We do not fear censorship, for we have no wish to offend with improprieties or obscenities, but we do demand, as a right, the liberty to show the dark side of wrong, that we may illuminate the bright side of virtue, the same liberty that is conceded to the art of the written word – that art to which we owe the Bible and the works of Shakespeare.”

To this day it remains an enthralling spectacle and social document and an influential landmark in the history of the cinema.

The cast includes:
Lillian Gish as Elsie Stoneman
Henry B Walthall as Colonel Ben Cameron
Mae Marsh as Flora Cameron
Violet Wilkey as Flora as a child
Miriam Cooper as Margaret Cameron
and Ralph Lewis as The Hon Austin Stoneman.